1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of computer graphical user interfaces and to the field of telecommunications. More specifically, this invention is related to the use of a computer graphical user interface to report the status of a telecommunication session to a user.
2. Description of the Problem Solved
Historically, voice telecommunications and data telecommunications have been largely separate to most computer users. Recently, however, telecommunication systems which have components of voice communication and computer or data communication integrated together have begun to proliferate. For example, many computer users are making use of data communication systems which include voice capability where the voice communication path is terminated by the user's personal computer. Such a system makes use of some type of voice data conversion, such as voice-over-Internet-protocol. Yet another type of system is disclosed in U.S. patent application No. 09/065,124, filed Apr. 23, 1998, entitled, "Integrated Telecommunication Collaboration System," which is assigned to the assignee the of the present application and incorporated herein by reference. This system provides for integration between data communication and high-quality PSTN voice communication.
While current systems are extremely useful, they suffer from basic deficiencies in the way that they present information to the computer user via the user interface. Many telecommunication systems provide a separate, dedicated application which displays the status of a particular telecommunication activity, such as a conference call. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,110 to Pinard et al., which is incorporated herein by reference. The system described in Pinard graphically displays various aspects of the status of certain types of telecommunication calls. However, it displays the status within a separate application; there is no integration with either a computer operating system interface or with general purpose desktop applications such as word processors and spread sheets. Also, the current systems provide no way to monitor the status of a PSTN telephone connection which may be used in implementing the telecommunication session.
Products such as NetMeeting.TM. by Microsoft provide toolbar buttons which can be activated from either within applications or from an operating system interface such as the taskbar application tray. However, the buttons provided by these products don't provide an accurate indication of the status of the telecommunication session. While they may be used to activate various functions, they do not change state in accordance with the status of various activities which form part of the telecommunications session. In fact, such systems often lead a user to believe he or she can activate a function which in fact cannot be activated because it is already in use, or the state of the system does not allow for its use.
What is needed is a computer graphical user interface which not only allows a user to activate various telecommunication session functions, but also dynamically indicates the status of various calls and activities within a telecommunication session. Such an interface should be able to be integrated with common desktop applications, or with the operating system interface. Such a system would not only keep a user informed of the status of a telecommunication session, but also would prevent the user from trying to activate functions which cannot be used at the present time.